Define and Control Severe Acute.pdf

China holds the key to solving many questions crucial to global control of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The disease appears to have originated in Guangdong Province, and the causative agent, SARS coronavirus, is likely to have originated from an animal host, perhaps sold in public markets. Epidemiologic find- ings, integral to defining an animal-human linkage, may be confirmed by laboratory studies; once animal host(s) are confirmed, interventions may be needed to prevent further animal-to-human transmission. Community seroprevalence studies may help determine the basis for the decline in dis- ease incidence in Guangdong Province after February 2002. China will also be able to contribute key data about how the causative agent is transmitted and how it is evolv- ing, as well as identifying pivotal factors influencing disease outcome. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a newlyemerged disease, caused by a previously unknown coronavirus. The first known cases occurred in Guangdong Province in southern China in November and December 2002. During late February 2003, a physician who was incubating SARS traveled from Guangzhou, the provincial capital, to Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China, and stayed at a hotel. There, the virus was transmit- ted from him to local residents and to travelers, who became ill and transmitted disease to others when they returned to Vietnam, Singapore, Canada, and Taiwan, Province of China (1). SARS has now occurred in 8,450 people with 800 deaths worldwide. The tally of SARS climbed rapidly in China through May 2003, then decelerated markedly during June. The disease has now been reported in 24 of China’s 31 provinces. By June 26, 2003, a total of 5,327 SARS cases and 348 deaths had been reported from mainland China, including 2,521 cases in Beijing and 1,512 in Guangdong Province. Since February 2003, teams of technical consultants for the World Health Organization have been working in China to provide as